


Death and All Her Secrets

by LyraNgalia



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Post Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-17
Updated: 2013-01-17
Packaged: 2017-11-25 19:55:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/642422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LyraNgalia/pseuds/LyraNgalia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The resurrection of Sherlock Holmes brought more than the consulting detective's return to Baker Street. It also brought with it a peculiar secret, one John Watson was unable to figure out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Death and All Her Secrets

**Author's Note:**

> Formerly known as _Death Takes A Holiday_ , but has since been renamed to avoid confusion with the RP cycle known as _Death Takes A Holiday_.

A year and three days after Sherlock Holmes returned from the dead and walked back into 221B Baker Street, he disappeared. John Watson had been worried, had in fact called on every connection Mycroft Holmes and the Scotland Yard had to figure out where his flatmate had gotten to.  
  
All he'd managed to discover was that Sherlock was not in the morgue, and that Detective Inspector Lestrade's eternally in-process divorce should really have been done with seven years ago.  
  
Eight days after Sherlock's disappearance, he returns and, despite John's protests, says absolutely nothing of where he had been. There were hints, of course. A touch of red mud on the cuff of his pants. A water stain on his shirt cuff. Hints that didn't make sense, not even to Mycroft.  
  
Two years pass, and he disappears again. Again, John worries and finds no leads. Once again, he returns, after eight days.  
  
Another six months, eight days. A year. Eight days.  
  
The length of time that stretched between disappearances differed, but the length of the disappearance was always the same. Eight days. Eventually, John gave up asking. Simply accepted the disappearances as another one of his flatmate's numerous odd habits. Deep down, he was even grateful for them, because at least it was an odd habit that didn't result in more severed heads or preserved brains in the refrigerator.  
  
*****  
  
It is eighteen months and fourteen days after his last disappearance that Sherlock Holmes leaves London again. He slips his brother's not-so-subtle detail in Bath, then takes a plane to Antwerp. Then another flight, this time to Rio De Janeiro. And the man who steps off the plane there is not the same one who had boarded. He is still irritable, still impatient with the world around him, but there is a different purpose to his stride, to the way his eyes sweep over the crowd.  
  
He knows she is waiting for him in Rio.  
  
He picked the location, which meant she picked the disguise. And it is part of the game for him to figure out said disguise. The same is true when she picks the location. No matter where the game is played, they have eight days to play it.  
  
Sometimes it takes three or four. The time in St. Petersburg he had almost lost, not recognizing her until seven days into the trip. Once, she had uncovered his disguise before the plane had even touched down in Bangkok. He suspects that had been her favourite.  
  
This time, he intends to win, and to that end his eyes sweep over the crowd in the airport terminal. He dismisses all the men above 45 and below 15 immediately. She'd fooled him once with that disguise. Not the woman pushing along a stroller with a squalling infant, or the one at the coffee shop shouting out orders.  
  
He looks twice at a well-dressed woman in a red dress and high heels, but her fingernails give her away as a schoolteacher. Divorce lawyer. Nurse. Doctor. Petroleum engineer. Hostess. Another lawyer. Tourist. Conference goer/tourist...  
  
He dismisses them one at a time, systematically. He knows she's here, because she will not be able to resist watching him. He checks the woman working the bakery, dismisses the three flight attendants rolling their matching luggage towards the jetway, a fourth catching up, with pale dirt on her sh--  
  
A smile, and he changes directions abruptly. Three strides and he's caught up to the fourth flight attendant. Her uniform is perfectly pressed, every strand of honey-blonde hair in place. His hand closes above hers on the suitcase, its wheel warped, chipped on the pavement outside, and recently.  
  
But the eyes beneath that honey-blonde hair and the uniform cap are exactly as he remembers them. Sharp and watchful, full of intelligence and that took in far more than she gave away. Irene Adler's eyes. The one person in the airport about whom he could deduce nothing, nothing except what hints she allowed to slip.  
  
"What would you have done if I hadn't noticed before you made it onto the plane?" he asks, his voice low in her ear even as he appears to be doing nothing more than helping straighten her luggage.  
  
Irene Adler smiles, and the disguise of the flight attendant falls away. She lets go of the offending piece of luggage, her fingers ghosting over the knuckles of his hand. Any observer would have dismissed it, but they are both aware of the intimacy of the simple gesture. The acknowledgment. "Then I would have flown to Buenos Aires," she answers without hesitation. "How fortunate that you were observant, Mr. Holmes."  
  
Her body is warm and familiar this close to him, and he rights the piece of luggage again and begins walking towards the exit, knowing she will fall into step with him. His hand rests at the small of her back as she does, the sort of simple gesture a pair of lovers would adopt, but one that does not suit either the Consulting Detective or the Woman. But then that was the appeal of their little games, these little disappearances. After his Fall, after his death, they had found in each other a holiday from their respective deaths, a momentary reprieve in being Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler again.  
  
And even after he had cleared his name, had returned to life and Baker Street, the reminder of this had lingered. And so the disappearances began. The liaisons and rendezvous, the games, and the disguises. Always, eight days.  
  
"Twenty seven minutes. Even you took six and a half hours on the plane in Thailand," he says. It's challenge and invitation both, as well as a reminder that they still had seven days, twenty-three hours, and thirty-three minutes left in Rio De Janeiro.  
  
She laughs and sways against him, the motion familiar. There were a few corrupt politicians she'd already found, that weren't part of her network of contacts. They could prove interesting. But then there was also Carnivale. She sounds pleased at his words, and offers him a challenge and invitation of her own.  
  
"Plenty of time to misbehave."


End file.
